


to love a prophet

by madasaboxofcats



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Episode Related, F/F, post 3.06
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-29
Updated: 2015-09-23
Packaged: 2018-04-17 21:46:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4682579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madasaboxofcats/pseuds/madasaboxofcats
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She really should just leave Root to die. Let the Vigilance dudes take care of her, put a bullet in her brain, whatever. It would solve a lot of her problems, not the least of which is that Root keeps getting the jump on her and it’s really fucking annoying. </p><p>--</p><p>Five episode-related ficlets. Root doesn't care much about her own life. Shaw cares enough to keep saving her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Mors Praematura

**Author's Note:**

> Set during 3.06, "Mors Praematura."

There are probably thirty good reasons why Shaw should stay put and let Root meet her maker under the streets of New York. The reasons vary from “she eats like a bird and that’s not normal because food is delicious,” to what she has dubbed “the iron incident,” to “she’s too tall and scowling at her makes Shaw kind of sore because she has to crane her neck because Root isn’t a normal human height.” Plus she kills people and stuff.

She really should just leave Root to die. Let the Vigilance dudes take care of her, put a bullet in her brain, whatever. It would solve a lot of her problems, not the least of which is that Root keeps getting the jump on her and it’s really fucking annoying. 

She’s the only person in the last decade, at least, to have pulled one over on Shaw.

Twice.

She’s not going to think about that. Because if she does, she really will walk away and get herself a Philly cheesesteak instead of helping Root not die.

So yeah, Root’s death wouldn’t be the worst thing to ever happen to Shaw, and it might actually improve her quality of life. Or at least her quality of sleep, which is basically the same thing. 

Seriously, who wakes somebody up with a fucking taser? 

(She’s kind of pissed she didn’t think of it first.) 

But whatever. She’s pretty sure Finch would be mad if she let Root die, although she can’t understand why he’d care – he’s also been through Root’s Kidnapping 101 course, and he’s a hell of a lot more delicate about that stuff than Shaw is. So why he gives a fuck is beyond her, but he didn’t want her to die in the warehouse in Utah, so he probably wouldn’t want her to die here either. 

Which really is a shame. A Philly cheesesteak sounds fucking excellent. 

There’s always a chance Root could take care of herself and manage not to die all on her own. Shaw tries to remember how many rounds Root had shot off before disappearing with Jason. Even if she only has one left, she’s a good enough shot to make it count. Plus, she’s got the Machine doing that weird “Here, I’m going to tell you everything, including things about people’s personal lives so that you can be really obnoxious about it” thing, so it would probably help her aim. Or something. 

Except if the Machine had any common sense, it would have told Root not to get herself cornered in the first place, so she can’t really hold out hope for a heroic intervention from Big Brother. She still doesn’t know why Root would so blindly follow a computer that doesn’t give a shit if she lives or dies but whatever, not her problem. 

But it kind of is her problem because sure, the Machine doesn’t care what happens to Root and neither does she, but Finch does and, for now, she takes her orders from him. And okay, he didn’t technically order her to save Root, but he tends to get Finch-y when Shaw kills people, and not saving Root is as good as killing her, so… yeah. She’s going to go save Root’s ass even though she’d rather be enjoying a sandwich and a beer.

Stupid Finch.

The smell of burnt spaghetti lingers in the damp tunnel air and she smiles a little. The spaghetti blowtorch thing _had_ been kind of fun. 

She can hear Root as she makes her way down the hall saying something about being out of bullets, so she quickens her pace. Vigilance’s goons are almost certainly not out of bullets, and she doubts Root is proficient enough at hand-to-hand combat to disarm both of them without getting herself shot. She’d end up dead, or worse – injured and in need of medical care that Shaw would then have to provide. 

“Alright bitch. Where’s Greenfield?” Goon number 1’s attempt to sound threatening is almost cute. Shaw points her weapon at the back of his knee – she’ll take him down first, and then the other one.

She can’t really see Root – the Goons are too tall – but she knows Root sees her when Goon number 2 asks her why she’s smiling. 

“I’m not smiling at you.” Her voice is almost sing-song-y, like one of those dumb Disney princesses, and when the Goons fall to the ground clutching their knees, Shaw sees the matching Disney princess grin.

Ugh. 

It’s bad enough that Root had kidnapped her, ziptied her, tased her, and forced her to go with her as she gallivanted around New York listening to a fucking computer blabbing in her ear with no explanation as to why they were doing anything, but now she has the audacity to smile like that? No. Not gonna fly.

“I knew you’d come back for me.” 

She really should’ve left her to die. Whatever punishment Finch would have doled out couldn’t be worse than listening to Root’s smug superiority all the way back up to the street. 

Unless she doesn’t have to. Her earlier threat – _you better hope I don’t remember_ – comes back to her and she smiles a little. 

“Mission accomplished?”

“Absolutely.”

This is going to be fun.

“Good.”

Her fist makes contact with Root’s jaw and Root’s body crumples in on itself as she falls to the ground. Shaw shakes her hand out a bit, and lets her grin widen. It’s not as satisfying as that time Shaw put a bullet in her shoulder, but it’s a pretty close second. 

She steps around the Vigilance operatives, at least one of which seems to have passed out – she doesn’t know if it’s from blood loss, or a thwack to his head when he fell, or just because he’s a fucking pussy, but she’s glad for it. Less for her to deal with. She kicks the other one in the head and he stops groaning, too. 

Root lies on the cement, limbs twisted awkwardly and for a moment, Shaw considers leaving her here and letting her wake up with all kinds of strange aches and pains. Or maybe she’ll come back in an hour and wake her up with a taser, see how she likes it.

But the Vigilance guys could be up before Root is (because she’s sure as hell not wasting her energy hauling them anywhere), and they could finish what they started, and then Shaw would be back at square 1 with a pissed of Finch lecturing her about how life – even obnoxious, self-important life – matters and one should always venture to preserve it whenever possible, or some other vaguely-patronizing shit.

So as it stands, she’s stuck with an unconscious Root – she grins at that because hey, Root fucking deserved it – in an underground tunnel, and maybe she should have thought through things a little bit and punched her above ground because getting her up the stairs is really going to suck. She crouches down and hooks her arms under Root’s, pulling her up with her as she stands.

Root’s body is limp and her boots scrape against the concrete as Shaw drags her back the way they came. Finch had better have a good idea on what they’re going to do with her when she wakes up. And he had better have a car waiting for them, because she’s not dragging Root one foot past the entrance to this stupid hole. 

She settles at the foot of the stairs and lets Root slump to the ground for a minute, shaking out the ache in her arms.

The stairs stretch out in front of her.

Ugh. 

She deserves a fucking raise.

 


	2. Aletheia

It’s Carter in her head as she presses her foot down on the pedal and speeds down the streets of New York.

Carter, lying on the sidewalk. 

Carter, surrounded by her own blood. 

Carter, who was good and strong and just violent enough to be fun.

Carter, who might not be dead if Finch hadn’t kept Root locked in a cage.

Root may be a psycho and she may be dangerous, but she’s fucking useful, and as long as she’s using her dangerous psycho powers for good and not evil, she’s probably worth keeping around. 

Which is why Shaw is headed to some warehouse in Queens to save Root’s ass. Again. Because Carter is dead and Root is only useful if she isn’t. 

She tightens her grip on the steering while and watches her knuckles turn white. She didn’t even know Carter that well – not like Reese did, or Finch – but she had admired her, and she can recognize the loss for what it is. She sees how Reese is now, angrier, more jaded, more like her. She sees Finch’s guilt playing out in every mission he sends them on, every unnecessary word of caution, every hesitation when she asks if a number is worth it. 

And maybe Root couldn’t have helped, maybe her Machine Bluetooth connection thing wouldn’t have warned them in time. It happened quickly, Finch said, Simmons coming out of the alley, and then bullets. But the Machine would have known, would have seen. Sure, that doesn’t meant that they would have been able to do anything, that Root would have been able to get information to them fast enough, that Root would even want to. But it’s something. 

Maybe Root couldn’t have saved Carter. But maybe she could have. 

And Finch kept her in a cage because he was afraid.

(Afraid of Root, afraid of the Machine, Shaw isn’t sure it matters which.) 

Carter was the best of them, and now she’s gone. Root might be the worst of them, and Shaw is rushing to save her. 

Shaw has no doubt that Control will kill Root once she’s gotten what she wants, whatever information kept her from giving the kill order in the hallway of that stupid hotel. It’s what Shaw would do, anyway. What she has done with more terrorists than she can count anymore, almost always on Control’s orders. 

Interrogate suspect. Enhanced methods approved. Execute. 

If Root’s lucky, Control will have skipped some of Shaw’s personal favorite torture methods – Palestinian hanging, electric shock, forcing the suspect stand for hours on end – and if she isn’t lucky, well, there may not be much Shaw can do for her once she gets there. 

She grits her teeth and switches lanes to pass the grandma going 55 in front of her. 

Seriously. Learn how to drive. This isn’t fucking Pensacola. 

She lays on the horn because she can, and smiles to herself when the old lady flips her off. At least Grandma is feisty. 

GPS says 3 minutes to the warehouse. 

Shaw is almost angry at Root for getting herself into this situation in the first place, for trusting a computer to keep her safe, and going all high-and-mighty to protect the Machine which is, granted, a pretty great piece of software, but not nearly the higher power Root thinks it is. The Machine can’t stop bullets. It can’t stop Control.

She can’t be too mad, though, because Root did save her life and no, actually, she can be pissed about that. Root did that and now Shaw owes her, and Shaw doesn’t like owing anybody anything. Especially not fucking Root. So yeah, she can be mad about Root being stupid enough to shoot up Control’s people and then get captured. She can be pissed that Root trusted the Machine enough to tell Shaw to leave her in the hallway. She can be pissed that Root saved her life, because now she’s dragging her tired ass out into Nowhere, Queens to keep Root from dying and it’s all really annoying.

Jerk. 

Not that she’d rather be dead. She’s just rather anybody else had done the saving. Even Lionel. 

Root is probably going to be super obnoxious and flirty about this, and the thought is almost enough to make Shaw turn around. Obnoxiously Flirty Root is her least favorite Root (followed closely by Crazy Zealot Root, Generally Annoying Root, Psycho Root, and Holier-Than-Thou-Condescending Root). She barely survived ten hours in that stupid CIA safe house with like six of those hours taken up by Root’s stupid, non-stop flirting, and Root will only be worse when she can hold the “you cared enough to save my life” card. 

Shaw will point out, of course, that she doesn’t care about Root as a person, only about the skills that make her a valuable (if volatile) addition to their band of weirdos, but Root won’t buy it, and Shaw’s life will be total, miserable shit.

She really should let Control have her way with Root.

But Carter wouldn’t, and Carter is dead, and Root is useful, so Shaw keeps on driving.


	3. Deus ex machina

Shaw has never really believed in a higher power.

When she was very young, she took her shoes off before entering her mother’s masjid, and she repeated the words over and over again – _La ilaha il Allah, Muhammad-ur-Rasool-Allah_ – until her mother was satisfied that she would grow up to be a good Muslim girl. 

She prayed once for Allah to make her like everyone else. 

Allah never answered, and Sameen never asked again. 

Shaw has never really believed in a higher power. 

But her mother believed in Allah, and she believed in her mother, so she tried. 

She went along with it – the fasting, the praying, everything – until the day she decided she didn’t want to do that anymore. On the day she came home from school and announced that she didn’t think Allah was real, her father shut himself in his study and didn’t talk to her for three days. Her mother hugged her and said, “Okay.” 

And that was it. 

When she was in the sixth grade, a girl in her school got sick (Sarah McNamara, blonde hair, always in pigtail braids, nice but not annoying about it) and instead of taking her to the doctor, her parents took her to church. They prayed, spent hours by her bedside as she got thinner, asked their God to spare her as Sarah and her blonde braids withered into nothing.

Sarah died, and Shaw got angry because it was _stupid_. Stupid and meaningless and preventable. She died for some god that either didn’t exist or didn’t care, and it made Shaw want to hit things.

At the wake, the parents stood still as a line of people offered condolences and prayers. Shaw’s mother brought her – “The rest of your class is going, Sameen. Don’t be difficult.” – and when they got to the head of the line, facing people who looked like they were probably sad, Shaw didn’t want to say she was sorry for their loss. She wanted to ask them why they killed their child, why a god they couldn’t see mattered more than a child they could.

She didn’t say that, though. She let her mother do the talking. 

 _We are so very sorry that you’ve had Sarah taken from you so soon. Take comfort in the fact that she is with her God now, in a better place._  

Shaw was silent.

She never really believed in a higher power. 

So she doesn’t understand, not even a little bit, this crazed belief that has Root running off to face her death every ten minutes. 

She also doesn’t understand why she can’t seem to stop herself from chasing after her. 

All Shaw knows is that the thought of Root all by herself in some Decima fortress surrounded by people who really want to kill her makes her uncomfortable. It’s not that Root can’t take care of herself – she’s proven to be more than capable with a gun (or two, which is entirely unnecessary, but also really fucking hot) -- it’s that Root’s priorities are all screwed up. 

There are things about Root that Shaw will probably never understand, even if she tries (which she is not particularly inclined to do because it’s _Root_ ), and chief among them is Root’s relationship with the Machine. 

For Root, the Machine is everything. The Machine is what Allah was to her mother, God to Sarah McNamara’s parents. The Machine is Root’s raison d’etre, and Shaw thinks the whole thing is stupid and short sighted.

At least the Machine exists, which is more than she can say for other supreme beings, but the Machine is a machine. Handy and pretty good at helping them help people, but it’s still only servers and code and computer junk. 

She trusts the Machine, but she wouldn’t die for it. Not for wires and code and replaceable things. 

It’s not that Shaw doesn’t understand sacrifice. She’s lived a life built on one sacrifice after another – the sacrifices her parents made to give her a better life, the sacrifices she made when it became apparent that she was different, the sacrifices she continues to make for the numbers, faces she doesn’t know or care about but that matter somehow.

She understands sacrifice. She even understands ultimate sacrifice, the kind Root seems bound and determined to engage in. 

There are things Shaw would die for. She would die for her country, for her fellow soldiers. She came close to it a couple of times in Iraq, Kuwait. 

She tries not to think about the fact that they’re in a war now, according to Root and Finch, which makes them all soldiers here – her, Root, John, Finch, even Fusco. The battles are different, as are the weapons, but the adrenaline that courses through her when Samaritan threatens one of her own is as real and as intense as the adrenaline she got dodging bullets in the sand. 

Shaw is a good soldier. She knows her place, she knows who the enemy is, she knows how and when to raise her weapon to fight and when it is better to run. Wars aren’t won and lost on impulse, and Shaw can play the long game when she needs to. 

Root is a terrible soldier. She charges into battle alone and basically unarmed, without sparing a second thought for her own life or that of Shaw or Reese or anyone who might be inclined to follow her stupid ass when they realize she’s gone all Lone Ranger on them. 

Good soldiers fight together, they don’t try to do it alone. 

Shaw is a good soldier. Root is not. 

But then it’s not like Root has a ton of experience being a team player.

Shaw doesn’t know all that much about pre-Machine Root, or about Samantha Groves, and she doesn’t really feel the need to learn, but it isn’t hard to figure out that Root doesn’t have anybody. Aside from the obvious “no calls, texts, emails, lunch meetings, Christmas visits” kind of stuff that a person can find out with a well-placed bug, it’s Root’s face that gives her away.

She gets this look sometimes – a little haunted and a little sad, and Shaw wonders if that is what loneliness looks like. But then the Machine says something and Root is all smiles, like the Machine is maybe the first thing she’s had to talk to in a decade. 

Which would be sad and everything if the Machine was the only thing Root had these days. But it’s not. She’s basically a part of the team, even if Harold is still kind of leery about her (which Shaw thinks is a little ridiculous – Root kidnapped her too, and she’s fine). Reese mostly ignores her, but Shaw doesn’t think Root likes him all that much either, so it probably doesn’t matter that she isn’t his favorite person. Lionel is only a little afraid of her these days, and he’s got all of these great nicknames that are probably terms of endearment or something. And Shaw tolerates her, which is more than Shaw does for most people.

Also, the dog likes her, which should really count extra because dogs are way better than people anyway. So yeah, Root has more than just the Machine. 

She doesn’t act like it, though, ditching them all for the almighty _Her_. 

Shaw can count on one hand the things she’s been willing to die for, and the Machine has never been among them. But Root? Root would welcome her own death if it ensured the Machine’s survival. 

How servers and code and computer junk rank above one’s own life, Shaw just doesn’t get. And if Shaw even considers trying to understand this about Root, if she even begins to think about what it might be like to have faith in something the way Root does, it’s probably because Root is interesting and Shaw is bored with nothing better to do and not all because she actually wants to get to know her. 

(She remembers a bar in Miami and a stilted “So this is what you do now?” attempt to make small talk, and she wonders what the hell happened to her, when did she become so damn _soft_.)

Whatever.

She doesn’t really know why she’s running off to save Root this time. 

Root is useful, sure, but “useful” doesn’t explain the tightness in Shaw’s stomach, and the litany of “Root is going to get herself killed” that played nonstop in her head when she realized what Root was doing. The fact that she actually stopped in the middle of the street, in the middle of a mission, to voice that particular thought is testament enough to the mess Root has made of her.

Root, the crazy-psycho-former-killer who believes so devoutly and worships without question. 

There are things about Root she doesn’t understand, but she’s used to not understanding people. The most confusing thing about Root is that sometimes there are things Shaw doesn’t understand about herself when she around Root, things that Root brings out in her that she can’t make any sense of, and _that_? That is new.

It should probably bother her more than it does, the fact that she’s off to save Root’s ass yet again without really knowing why she gives a fuck. Yeah, she’s kinda mad at Root, and yeah, she’s kind of wondering where her own mind went because a bike? Really? But mostly she’s focused on what she needs to do to keep them both alive.

So Shaw is on a goddamn bicycle pedaling to goddamn New Jersey because Root is ready to die for her cause, and Shaw is just not okay with that. The Machine can be rebuilt; Root can’t. 

If she can’t put a finger on why exactly she gives a fuck, well, she’ll figure that shit out later. When Root is far, far away from trigger-happy Decima cronies.

(When she’s _safe_.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Arabic phrase referenced early in the chapter -- La ilaha il Allah, Muhammad-ur-Rasool-Allah -- is known as the Kalima Tayyab and means "There is no god but Allah, Muhammad is the messenger of Allah." There are six kalimas that were compiled together for children to memorize and learn the basic fundamental beliefs of Islam. 
> 
> Masjid = Arabic word for mosque.


	4. prophets

The next time Root pulls this stupid, self-sacrificial bullshit and gets herself fucking shot, Shaw is going to pull out her own gun and finish the job. 

Then, at least, she wouldn’t have to worry about whether Root was dead or alive. 

Not that she worries now. 

Except yeah, she does, because Root _matters_ and Shaw kind of hates that but also kind of can’t do anything about it.

Whatever.

The point is, she’s getting really tired of chasing after Root when she takes up these suicide missions. 

She’s not going to stop, though, because fuck Harold’s talk about war and sacrifices, Root isn’t dying. Not on her watch. 

But Root’s not going to stop either, because this is who she is. She is the Machine’s first line of defense, and that’s maybe the only identity that’s really _hers_ right now, maybe the only one that’s ever been hers and hers alone, and Root would give up breathing before she’d give up the sense of purpose that the Machine gives her. 

Fucking Machine. 

Fucking _Root_. 

So Root isn’t going to stop throwing herself into the fire, and Shaw isn’t going to stop trying to pull her out, so where does that leave either of them? 

Fucking frustration-land, that’s where.

“You know, Shaw, you keep watching her like that, she’s going to get the wrong idea.”

Shaw grits her teeth and lowers the binoculars, Root and Finch shrinking down to vaguely Root-and-Finch-shaped blobs in the distance. 

“What are you doing here, Reese?” 

 “Same as you. Checking up on Root.”

“Bullshit.” John doesn’t give two shits about what happens to Root, and they both know it. He tolerates her, they way Shaw tolerated her until she more-than-tolerated her. 

He shrugs and looks out to where Root and Finch are still talking. She follows his gaze. 

She’s never seen Root in white and it’s weird in a way she can’t quite pinpoint. Root is black leather and boots, even in the summer, and the white just doesn’t suit her. She looks like someone else, another identity provided by the Machine. Shaw swears that every time Root sheds her own skin to sink into someone else’s, a piece of Root flies away on the breeze, sacrificed in the name of the greater good. She wonders if, by the end of this, there will be any of the real Root left, or if she’ll be this kaleidoscope person, made up of a thousand different identities swirling around and around in seemingly endless variations. 

It’s not just saving Root’s life that she cares about these days. It’s keeping Root whole. Keeping Root _Root_. 

“You go to the hotel?”

She nods. “Found her guns, thought she’d want them back.” 

She doesn’t tell him about the pool of blood she’d found, or how unsettled she’d been at the thought of Root dropping her weapons and leaving herself an open target for Martine. Fucking stupid. It’s one thing for Root to chase after threats on the orders of the Machine – Shaw’s kind of gotten used to her doing that – it’s entirely another for her to put down her fucking weapons and trust that a computer will keep her alive. 

The idea that Root wasn’t trusting the Machine to save her, but was instead sacrificing herself in some vaguely noble gesture of redemption or some bullshit isn’t one that Shaw likes to consider.

It makes it harder to be angry, and Shaw really wants to be angry.

She _deserves_ to be angry. 

Martine isn’t some phantom threat. She’s real, and she’s deadly, and Shaw very well could have found Root’s body somewhere in that hotel, limp and lifeless because Martine had done the job she’d been ordered to do. 

The next time Shaw sees that blonde bitch, she’s going to put so many holes in her, Swiss cheese will look like a fucking Renaissance tapestry. 

She isn’t sure if she’s angrier at Martine or at Root. She’d shoot both of them if she got the chance. 

Okay, so she probably wouldn’t really shoot Root, but she’d think about it a lot, or maybe fondly reminisce about the one time she did shoot her.

“Talk to her yet?” 

John is looking her like he knows something she doesn’t and she kind of wants to punch him.

(Because she knows, she does, she just doesn’t want to deal with it or talk about it or do anything about it, really, except hope it goes away. This stupid caring about Root thing.) 

“No. By the time I got sight of her, some moronic intern at Manhattan General was massacring her shoulder and then she went to talk to Finch.”

“She couldn’t go to you, Shaw. Sameen Gray isn’t a doctor.” 

“Sameen Gray can suck my dick.” 

John smiles a little. 

“I’m sure Root would love to see that.” 

Shaw almost chokes on a laugh. John looks so damn proud of himself and his dirty innuendo.          

“Whatever, Root’s all about the Machine.” 

“The Machine and you, Shaw.” 

She rolls her eyes. If it came down to it, Shaw knows without a doubt that Root would choose the Machine, and Shaw can’t really fault her for it. That’s just how Root is wired. 

And sure, it doesn’t make sense to her, but maybe it doesn’t have to. 

“You know if she gets the wrong idea, maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing.” John’s doing that thing where he looks all smug and know-it-all-ish. Jerk. 

She doesn’t argue with him, though. 

In the distance, Root gets up from the bench and walks away from Finch, so Shaw follows her, leaving Reese behind without a word. Root needs her guns back, and someone should probably make sure the moronic intern didn’t fuck up the stitches in Root’s shoulder and leave a scar.

Whatever.


	5. If-Then-Else

There’s a moment when she’s lying on the floor after the elevator doors have closed and the others are safe when she wonders if maybe _this_ is what Root feels for The Machine. This kind of broken, destructive devotion that turns prophets into martyrs and sociopaths into sacrificial lambs.   

She wonders if the force that took Shaw from the temporary safety of the elevator to almost-certain death, if that _thing_ that she can’t describe and doesn’t really understand is the same thing that happens inside Root’s head every time the Machine talks to her. The need to save, to protect at all costs. 

Pansy-ass emotional bullshit. 

She’s going to die. She knows that, has known it since she spotted the override button on the wall. It was only a matter of how many Samaritan agents she could take down with her.

Every breath she draws hurts, like the air is setting her lungs on fire, burning her up from the inside out. The blood spilling out of her curls around her back, pooling there, warm and thick, and she tries not to shiver, not to show them how weak she is. She’ll die here, but she doesn’t have to make a big deal of it, doesn’t want to give Martine the satisfaction of watching her die. 

Martine no longer stands above her – she’s talking on her headset about ten feet away, and Shaw thinks about trying to get up, to stand, to run, to shoot Martine in her stupid blonde head, but Shaw’s surrounded by Samaritan agents, and her ab muscles are probably ripped to shreds anyway and no, she’s just going to lay here until the darkness that is pressing in on the edges of her vision takes over. 

Yeah, she’d like to take out Martine. She’d like to fucking crucify that bitch. But she doesn’t need to be the one hammering nails into Martine’s hands to trust that she will get what’s coming to her. 

Shaw knows two things for certain: one, Root is volatile, a chemical waiting to explode with even the slightest provocation, and two, Root loves her. Shaw’s death will be enough to cause Root to combust, flames pouring out of her and burning anyone that comes near her. Root will rip Martine limb from limb, hurt her in ways Shaw isn’t creative enough to consider because she dared take away something that Root cared about. She’ll do it with a smile on her face, crazed and predatory like she’d been when Shaw had first met her. 

Shaw is kinda pissed she won’t be around to watch. 

A Samaritan agent kicks her leg on his way toward Martine, and Shaw can’t help the hiss of pain that escapes her. If that idiot had been a better shot, she wouldn’t even be here. Fucking gut wounds take forever to kill a person.   

Her next blink is long, slow, and the effort it takes to open her eyes is almost too much. 

This is definitely not how she expected to die, bleeding out in the basement of goddamn Wall Street mecca. 

Yeah, she thought she’d go down fighting, probably with guns involved, maybe some explosions. And all in all, this whole situation was pretty badass-action-hero, so she can’t complain too much about how it measures up to her best-case death scenario. But she didn’t think she’d end up lying around waiting for death to hurry the fuck up.

The red light on the security camera blinks and if she had her gun, she’d shoot the shit out of it because thanks a lot, all-powerful Machine. If Root were here, she’d probably say this was all part of some grand, Machine-y plan or some bullshit like that. 

(Or she wouldn’t – Root’s screams still ring in her ears, loud and angry and sad.) 

But maybe this was manufactured by the Machine – the sacrifice of one to save the many. Shaw knows her place here, knows she is the most expendable of all of them, and the Machine must know that, too, must see the value of Finch and Root and Reese. 

(She’s definitely more useful than Fusco, objectively speaking, but he’s got a kid and that matters. Kids matter.) 

If Shaw had more energy, she’d probably be mad about that. 

Except not really because she _gets_ it. She’s been sacrificing the one to save the many for years. 

She thinks about the men that looked like her father, on their knees in front of her, begging for their lives. She always pulls the trigger, presses the button, looks away from their children and their wives and doesn’t give it a second thought because what is one life in comparison to thousands, millions? 

So yeah, Shaw gets that, she lives by that code. 

But she’s not lying in a pool of her own blood because of all of those people, the unnamed thousands and millions. This thing she’s done isn’t about them. It’s about four people. And a dog. 

(The best dog in the universe, probably.) 

It’s about Finch and his stupid computer that gave her this stupid purpose and she hates him a little for it, but she’s pretty sure the world has benefitted from Finch and the Machine and whatever. 

It’s about John, who never pushed her to be any more than she is, who likes guns and steak and attractive women, and who brought Bear into their group, which is reason enough to try to keep him alive.

She tries not to think about him lying in the elevator, shot and not really moving. He’s taken bullets before, they all have, and they always survive.

Well. Almost always.

Carter, before. Herself now.

Hopefully John is luckier than Shaw is.

It’s even a little about Fusco, although she can’t really pinpoint why beyond “he has a kid and his kid wouldn’t want him dead.”

And there’s Root. Just… Root.

Shaw’s stomach twinges and she isn’t sure if it’s the pain from the bullet wounds or that weird stomach thing that she’s come to associate with Root (even just the thought of Root, which Shaw finds particularly annoying). It figures that Root would be a fucking pain in the ass even in what are probably Shaw’s dying moments. Jackass.

But there was Root in the elevator, begging Shaw not to do what needed to be done, making eyes at the button like she’d like to do it herself and Shaw just couldn’t let that happen. Root would throw down her life for the Machine, but Shaw would throw down her life for Root – and she has now, kind of, which is weird and uncomfortable and it’s a good thing she’s going to die soon because this whole “self-sacrifice” thing is dangerously close to emotional territory that she doesn’t process or understand or feel all that well, and dealing with that would suck.

It would be just her damn luck if she didn’t die, and had to face Root and whatever stupid “you kissed me and then did the thing” emotions would result from all of this.

Whatever. 

She’s feeling pretty close to dead – tired, so damn tired – so that hypothetical probably doesn’t matter all that much. 

What matters is that Root is alive. 

What matters is that they all are. 

She takes in a breath and sinks into the pain shooting through her gut. 

Maybe this really is how Root feels about the Machine, this contentment that leaks through the pain. However great the pain is (at the hands of Control or Samaritan or whoever), it will always be worth it because, to Root, the Machine is worth it. 

And to Shaw, Root is probably worth it, too. 

As obnoxious and annoying as that is. 

Maybe this is what it’s like to feel stupid, irrational faith or devotion or whatever other bullshit Root talks about. 

Maybe this is what it’s like to love something.

Shaw closes her eyes, exhales, and lets the darkness take her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the slight delay -- this took a very different turn than I was expecting. I definitely didn't realize when I started this that "The Cold War" went directly into "If-Then-Else" (like, there are like 20 minutes that elapse between the end of 4.10 and start of 4.11) and realizing that changed my whole game plan, which was annoying. I had thought there was a night between the two (I thought everybody was crowding around the Stock Exchange in the morning, at the start of the trading day) so I designed a chapter around that and then rewatched the episodes and OOPS, NOT SO MUCH. 
> 
> Anyway. Thanks for reading. :)


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